Cork boss Ronan McCarthy says his players didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of drubbings from Kerry and now Tyrone.

However, he says that he and his management team will be going “a different way” in 2019 on the back of recent hidings.

After an encouraging 11-point win over Tipperary in the Munster semi-final, Kerry thrashed them by 17 points in the final and they only fared marginally better against Tyrone, who had 16 points to spare in Saturday’s fourth round qualifier.

“We were very clear with the players that we wanted to get as much as we could out of this year,” said McCarthy.

“I think the danger with three-year terms is that three years down the line you may not have made much progress so you have to try and get the most out of the year and we felt after Tipp, we had a mixed League and there was a lot of kind of people making excuses for us about injuries and everything else and players not being available.

“We then beat Tipp and got a bit of momentum and it’s disappointing that we haven’t built on the momentum we got from Tipp.

“It has to be also said about the players that they’re a very, very honest group of players, they train extremely hard.

“They don’t deserve what has happened out there but that’s life and you don’t always get what you deserve and that’s it.

“The basics of commitment and training, dedication and work and everything else are there but they’re not coming out on the pitch and therefore we must go a different way.”

While McCarthy, who has already lost veteran Donncha O’Connor to retirement in the aftermath of this latest defeat, was hoping for a response to the Kerry rout on Saturday, he didn’t necessarily expect one.

“You’re entitled to nothing. The fact that we were hammered by Kerry doesn’t mean that we’re owed anything, you have to go out and earn it and win it so like this notion that we were entitled to something after the drubbing we got from Kerry, there’s proof, we got another one.

“You have to go out and earn what you get and the pity from my point of view is that the work that the players have put in hasn’t been reflected in that outside but we have to accept it, that’s it.”

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